Fascinating, frustrating, unmissable. Frustrating in that the film’s in pretty rough shape, a dupe with severe nitrate deterioration. The widely available George Eastman House print, free online, fortunately improves as it goes along. Much better by the crucial last two reels where Joseph Arthur’s 1890 stage melodrama’s idea of tying the hero to a conveyor belt at a sawmill is filmed to stunning effect. And note, it’s the guy on the belt and the gal who saves him in the nick of time. (As if Snidely Whiplash threw the switch and Nell Fenwick saved Dudley Do-Right.) But how’d we get here? Briefly, under top silent scripter June Mathis*, hungry orphan Viola Dana meets-cute with handsome young Perry Bascom by stealing his lunch. On his way to claim his late father’s sawmill from his Step-Uncle, he’s eager to marry Dana and settle down. But when he gets involved in politics, a previous wife surfaces to denounce him. She was already married to another, but can he prove it? And now, Dana’s past is leaking. Seems her mom ran off with . . . Bascom’s father! These newlyweds are brother and sister! Plus, her kindly landlords, who are about to throw her out, discover they are her actual Grandparents. This but a fraction of the melodrama Mathis has to parse, which she does neatly under the clarifying direction of John H. Collins. (The fourth of their five collaborations at Metro.) Collins, who managed to make good films even at Edison*, shows flashes of brilliance here. The pastoral courtship (though you have to squint) and even more in that sawmill climax. What advanced editing, closeups and angles. His early death during next year’s Spanish Influenza Epidemic, only 29, a huge loss to cinema. To Viola Dana, too, as they were husband & wife.
READ ALL ABOUT IT: *The late ‘teens/early ‘twenties saw female creatives squeezed out of the film biz. The two most powerful women left were writers Frances Marion and June Mathis. Mathis going on to discover Rudolph Valentino with THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE/’21 only to slip when she lost BEN-HUR to the newly configured M-G-M. Then dying in 1927, only 40. A new critical study, JUNE MATHIS: THE RISE AND FALL OF A SILENT FILM VISIONARY by Thomas J. Slater details the life & work.
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *More Collins from his Edison days. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/09/john-h-collins-edison-films-director.html
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